Archive for October, 2011

I’m going to have to find a new group soon, as I’m going to be moving. The landlord let the house go into foreclosure. Currently, I’m staying with one of the guys from the group. I might be able to keep in touch with a couple of the guys, maybe find some time to play DDO or Minecraft. DDO isn’t nearly as good as the real thing, and I therefore haven’t played since before my group got started, but it could be a bit fun.

Meanwhile, I recently agreed to play a quick game of EERS with the guy I’m staying with; EERS stands for Easiest Ever Roleplaying System and involves rolling d6 for all action resolution, with DC set by the GM. The experience has made me realize some things about my own campaign.

My sister was also playing, as a witch. I was a lightly armored fighter. We woke up in what was apparently a prison, with all our weapons and armor, for some reason. I decided just to go with it. The first thing I did was stand very still in the corner next to the door until, for some reason a guard walked in completely unaccompanied. Still just going with it, I killed him swiftly. He turned out to have three keys on him, of gold, silver, and iron. I picked them up with a piece of cloth, careful not to touch them with bare skin, and put them in a pocket. I decided to give the GM the benefit of the doubt, and suspect a trap.
I hid back in my corner with the body. Two more guards soon entered, and I managed to bluff them into thinking that I was supposed to be released yesterday- I would never have even allowed a roll, but I went with it. Somehow, they never saw the body.
While they both left, I gave my sister’s character my spear blade to use as a weapon, using the dead guard’s sword and an improvised parrying cloak of prison sheets.
When the guards reentered, we attacked. I entangled one in my sheet, but unfortunately didn’t kill them both before the witch (who chose to specialize in illusion) was slashed across the belly. I left her for dead, as she was bleeding profusely and would surely die in two minutes realistically (to my sister’s complaints), and ran off down the hallway. Here, my sister who had refused to be put out of her misery,
was allowed to fashion a bandage out of sheets, without any healing experience. She found out that for some reason, one of those two other dead guards had keys on him, and as she walked (somehow) down the hallway she just happened to find an imprisoned shaman who was wiling to heal her once she released him. I could feel the sense of danger draining away, and I remembered one of my much earlier adventures, wherein I had given all the players full heals and one of them his sundered greataxe just before a powerful boss fight. They all still died- I wonder if I did it because I cared about them winning, or because I wanted them to see as much of this cool enemy as possible. Either way, I hadn’t made the right choice.
Meanwhile, I somehow found my way to the warden’s office, where I used sheer charisma to try to convince him to let me toughen up the obviously lax standards of the prison. I succeeded and then some on my roll, and was expecting him to at most send me back to my cell whilst he considered it, but he just said
“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that, as you are still technically a prisoner”.
I’m still not sure if it was the wrong choice, but I immediately thought of a time that a player had plans for world domination, involving slavery, genocide, and deals with evil fey. I shot him down with something along the lines of
“dude, why can’t you just play at least a flawed hero? I don’t feel like you’re taking this seriously”.
I had created this world, and I wanted him to take it seriously, which, neither seeming to be insane nor having a grudge against anyone in my world, he did not seem to be.

DMing feels hard to me now- I wanted to be a player, and also get to make the house rules, choose the system, and build the setting. I still do, even though I know that it isn’t possible, which makes it hurt even more. It takes a lot of work to DM, not in preparation, but expenditure of energy during the game to think, and think, and remember, and focus when nobody else is.
I think I need to take a break from it, and spend some more time as a player. Once I move, I’ll try to find a group that will take me, maybe even learn a new system. Could be fun.